Thank you for your kind letter of July 3, 2014. I apologize for being so slow in reply.

I realize you and the President have a great many more things on your plate than planning for global warming but then part of my letter was that we have time to stop solar forcing by atmospheric Co2 and methane if we can soon reduce just a small amount of solar energy from reaching the atmosphere.

As for your more immediate problems that you and the President are now working I can only give you the same advise that General Douglas MacArthur used to give his son, also General Douglas MacArthur. (That’s right our General Douglas MacArthur of WWI and WWII and Korea, his father, had the same name and also was a General.)

He advised his son that he not rely on war councils. The problem is that war councils tend to be excessively conservative because no one wants to have the risks of their proposals pointed out by their fellow officers so they engage in self censorship themselves. In the end you have to select one of these officers to take command put one plan in charge and execute it in a unitary command.

As far as not having a strategy for Isis in Syria it is easy for the Pentagon to say it has one but until they persuade the President they do, they have not created a strategy. That’s one of the neat things about being Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States: you get to decide. Got a plan to get back out? What happens if Isis dismounts from its stolen armored vehicles after they come under air attack like the Serbs did when they came under an air only attack. What then? If they dismount and disappear back in the towns and cities and continue killing does the strategy stop that? The whole world will say we forced Isis back into the cities and have a duty to help the citizens under the Isis boot. Got a plan for that? You have got troops in Kuwait and Afghanistan which you were planning on moving any way.

Well as I said I know you have a lot on your plate. (By the way if Isis does dismount and takes up defensive positions they would be making the typical mistake of inexperienced guerrillas: Attempting to hold territory. See the book The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him. ((Marine Corp Gazette) I read it when I was expecting to be drafted. That and Last Reflections on a War, and Littleheart’s Strategy.) As I say your strategy should include this turn of events.

As far as not getting involved in Syria at first beyond getting rid of the chemical warfare weapons you might mention Churchill’s admonition: “It is better to jaw jaw than to war war.”